Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Gateau de Crepes with Green Tea Cream

I had a couple of fellow bakers and the idea was we would whittle away the afternoon with board games and trying out some food. The invite stated something along the lines of 'bring a baked good that you've been trying out/ experimenting with'. I really always experiment so I thought I would continue with the theme. I saw this at Desserts Magazine http://tartelette.blogspot.com/2008/08/two-chocolates-some-salted-butter.htmlIt's from the book:'Chocolate Epiphany: Exceptional Cookies, Cakes and Confections for Everyone' by François Payard.

If you can roll out a ton of crepes in a small amount of time then let me tell you this is the recipe for you. If you can't then it's a labor of love...a seriously long, drawn out love. Let me tell you I spent over an hour making the crepes for this guy.

However, it is a visually stunning cake - all the lovely layers of brown contrasting with the vibrant green pastry cream (a light one - with the pastry cream being 'lightened' if you can call it that... with whipped cream). I tried the pastry cream without the added cream and it had a really intense matcha tea flavor. The interesting thing was, once you added the crepes and the whipped cream, the flavor wasn't really there anymore. It was lost - and only found at the end of a bite. Which, as I'm not a massive fan of matcha tea was a good thing. The crepes themselves are infused with orange zest which really dominates the flavor.

This is not a sweet treat - it is a rich treat. It's about the dense pastry cream and the rubbery crepes. I adore the way it looks utterly ragged on the outside, and yet when you cut into it it looks amazingly organized.

Hahahaah I know this cake is an absolute labour of love! I've made a Nutella version and I think it took me like 2.5 hours to make crepes, fills, stack, hope it didn't lean sideways, etc! Yours looks truly stunning, I think you did a marvelous job because it doesn't look messy at all, which is usually the result of these crepe cakes.I'm glad you were adventurous and experimented with this!

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